This invention relates to a continuous, high-speed cooking and cooling method and system for the production of cooked foodstuffs made from dough. In particular, this invention pertains to the continuous high speed cooking and cooling method and system utilizing a predetermined specific infrared heating pattern to produce cooked corn flour cakes, commonly known as tortillas, consistently possessing commercially attractive appearance, flavor, texture and an upper browned toasted skin surface having integrity, flexibility and enough self-supporting strength that it can be lifted away from the body of the tortilla by the consumer for inserting edible fillings.
Commercially produced cooked dough foodstuffs, such as pizzas, pancakes, and tortillas, are food items having popular appeal to a wide variety of consumers. However, the success of commercial production of such food items depends on many factors including efficient and economical processes and machines that not only enable high-speed production but also consistently reproduce the flavor, texture and appearance of the cooked food item which consumers have come to associate with a desirable good quality product.
While the desired characteristics of a cooked food item may be reproduceable at an acceptable level when home cooked on a small scale repeatedly by the same individual, the same does not hold true in all commercial productions. Thus, in commercial production of cooked food items many variables affect the characteristics and quality of the product. For example, if production control is too dependent upon the discretion of the process or machine operator a variation in end product characteristics is likely to occur from plant shift to shift, from plant to plant or from one time to another depending on changes in personnel. Although consistency and reproduceability in product characteristics and quality is desirable, sufficient flexibility in control of these characteristics is also desirable where consumer preferences may vary, as from locality to locality.
A tortilla is a cooked, round, thin cake of unleavened corn flour usually eaten hot with or without a topping, or rolled with seasoned meat to form an enchilada. Consumers have come to expect that a tortilla consist of three layers, namely, a moist cooked center layer surrounded by a skin on either surface. One skin is attached to the moist cooked central layer; this may be considered the bottom side. The other skin is normally not attached to the central layer, having been blown free by internal steam generation. These top and bottom skins are light colored and have a skin flexibility sufficient to enable the tortilla to be rolled around other foodstuffs to make enchiladas, or the like. The top skin desirably constitutes a large blister, that is, it is normally free of the central layer and has integrity, flexibility and sufficient strength to be self-supporting. In a tortilla which possesses characteristics meeting the approval of a knowledgeable consumer, the upper skin is usually of such completely cooked and brown character that it can be pulled away from the moist center layer by a person's fingers. Consequently, a commercially acceptable tortilla must possess not only the requisite taste and flavor and inner cooked texture and consistency but it must also possess an appearance appealing to the eye and preferably have an upper flexible skin which constitutes an integral large blister.
Many prior art processes and apparatus attempting to produce tortillas possessing the requisite characteristics of flavor, texture and appearance have done so only in a laborious and time consuming manner so as to be commercially unsatisfactory from the standpoint of efficiency and economy. Generally, in the prior art cooked dough foodstuffs, such as tortillas, have been produced by first employing a mixer, usually located remotely from the tortilla forming equipment. This remote mixer is used for mixing the ingredients, such as flour in a liquid to form a dough. Then the dough is moved to the tortilla forming equipment for shaping it into the desired form and finally cooking it on calcium salt coated hot metal slats in the nature of a griddle to yield the end product. Attempts to speed up the cooking by raising the temperature or heating action applied to tortillas causes a burning or blackening of the exterior while leaving the interior in an unsuitable semiraw or uncooked condition.
Thus, there exists a need for a process and apparatus which will enable the production of consumer acceptable tortillas while at the same time providing the economy and efficiency of commercial production.